Magistrates were on Thursday mulling
their response to what they described as a new attempt at
"deligitimization" after Deputy Premier and leader of the
right-wing League Matteo Salvini posted video footage dating to
August 2018 and allegedly featuring a Catania judge now at the
centre of a political storm after she ruled that parts of two
recent government decrees on migrants were illegitimate amid
claims of bias.
Magistrates union ANM said it would "assess, together with the
person directly concerned, whether and how to intervene" in
relation to the video, which Salvini claims shows Judge Iolanda
Apostolico and her partner at a protest demonstration at Catania
port on August 25, 2018 against the closed-ports policy
introduced under his tenure as interior minister, and
specifically against the refusal to allow 190 rescued refugees
and migrants to disembark from the coast guard ship Diciotti for
several days.
Apostolico drew strong criticism from the government and
politicians at the weekend after she overturned detention orders
against four Tunisian nationals being held at the newly-opened
pre-expulsion centre (CPR) at the Pozzallo first reception
centre, or hotspot, in Sicily under a new law providing for the
detention of asylum-seekers from so-called safe countries of
origin during the assessment of their claim on grounds it is
unconstitutional and in breach of EU and international law.
Premier Giorgia Meloni said she was "astonished" by the decision
and the interior ministry said it would appeal against the
ruling, amid allegations - based on social media posts - that
the judge is biased.
The row prompted members of the Italian judiciary's
self-governing body CSM to present a request for a procedure to
be opened to protect Apostolico.
"Minister Salvini's initiative to share a video of the 2018
demonstration in Catania is intended to confuse the levels,"
said CSM councillor Roberto Fontana, one of the magistrates
behind the protection move.
"Jurisdiction is expressed through rulings, which can obviously
be criticised and challenged on technical-legal grounds," he
continued.
However, "shifting the focus to the life of the magistrate and
her possible activities outside the judicial sphere is a way to
avoid discussion on the merit of the provision and an attempt to
delegitimize judicial activity," Fontana said.
However, Salvini returned to the matter later in the day, saying
he was "dismayed" about the information emerging from the video.
In a statement issued by the League , Salvini said the presence
of Apostolico and her partner, "in turn an official of the
Catania Palace of Justice, and publicly aligned against the
League and on the side of the demonstrators" at the "protest
organised by the extreme left at the port of Catania on August
25, 2018" is "a circumstance that reinforces the sense of the
couple's total ideological alignment, even in the midst of a
demonstration involving shouts of 'murderers' and 'animals' at
Police".
"There is an accentuated tendency to judge a judge's
independence, which must be evaluated within the context of a
trial, moving away from legitimate criticism of provisions
towards personal screening, namely looking at who the judge is
rather than at what he or she has written," said ANM President
Giuseppe Santalucia during an interview with Sky.
"I am concerned that this is a slippery slope," he added.
In reply, the League said it was not "screening" judges for
their private views but added that Italians should be worried
about being judged by allegedly biased officials.
"What has been happening in the last few hours is not a worrying
screening of judges and their private lives as the ANM claims:
we are faced with a public demonstration at the port of Catania
and public posts of insults against Minister Matteo Salvini,"
said League sources.
"Rather, the 58 million 851,000 Italians who may be judged by
magistrates whose impartiality and third-party status are
seriously compromised by the Apostolico case should be worried".
However, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio on Wednesday ruled out a
new institutional clash between politics and the judiciary.
"No one wants to repeat the years of lead of conflict between
politics and the judiciary," he said during parliamentary
question time.
The government and the judiciary have already come to blows on
several occasions during the current parliament over decisions
involving members of the cabinet and planned judicial reform.
Asked by ANSA to comment on the video, Apostolico told ANSA on
the phone "I'm at work and I can't talk".
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